The Weekly Word - A Devotion for the Week of November 11
Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.
-- 1 Peter 5:7
This year has been an especially difficult one for farmers across the Midwest. Beginning with the spring flooding and late planting, the season has presented one challenge after another. Even now, in the midst of harvest, many farmers don’t know for sure if this year will be a profitable one.
Farmers can’t control the weather or the markets or even their crop yields. If they let it, this loss of control can cause them tremendous anxiety. On the other hand, as a farmer friend of mine said recently, the most challenging seasons also present the best opportunities to grow our faith and trust in God. The choice is ours: we can choose pessimism, cynicism and fear … or we can choose to trust God by releasing our anxiety to Him.
If you are carrying a heavy burden or navigating a season that feels out of control, God invites you to hand over your anxiety to Him. He wants your burden and will willingly carry it, not because He has to, but because He wants to. Today, choose to trust the deep and abiding love God has for you.
Heavenly Father, help me trust You when I am feeling like I’m in over my head. Rather than gripping my anxiety tighter and tighter, as I am prone to do in times of stress, help me instead release it to You. Amen.